Development of a Culturally Specific Career Exploration Group for Urban Chinese Immigrant Youth

A rapid increase in the number of Chinese immigrants and the specific challenges faced by low‐income Chinese immigrant youth attending urban schools warrant culturally sensitive school‐based interventions and services. However, research and services are limited for this population because of cultural biases in traditional career theories and the “model minority” myth suggesting that Asian students are excelling. The authors developed and implemented a culturally specific career exploration group for low‐income Chinese immigrant youth to address their career concerns with respect to multiple social and cultural factors and to provide social support. Implications for future program development and research are provided.     

Improving Prediction of Significant Career‐Related Constructs for High School Students With Learning Disabilities

Preparing students with learning disabilities (LDs) to make the transition into the world of work is considered an essential preparation that high schools can provide. However, existing services are limited for career development preparation, and available programs rely on assessments normed for samples of students without LDs. This study examined the predictability of critical career‐related constructs of dysfunctional career thoughts, career maturity, and vocational identity in high school students with LDs, using a sample of 139 such students. Data analyses were performed using multiple regression and t tests. Results indicate that it is possible to predict important career constructs for students with LDs using standardized instruments, which can inform subsequent interventions.     

Career Development and School Success in Adolescents: The Role of Career Interventions

Using longitudinal survey data, the present study examined the effect of participation on career development skills in 6 career education experiences and school success among South Korean adolescents (2,473 young men, 2,132 young women; mean age = 15.86 years). Regression analyses indicated that students who participated in career education programs in school once or twice over a 2‐year period had the highest scores in both career development skills and school success. In contrast, there was no relationship between career education, career development skills, and school success for students who participated in career education programs only once or not at all. Results support the influence of career education interventions on students' career development skills and school success. This study provides accountability information on the effectiveness of career education interventions at South Korean secondary schools. The authors offer suggestions about more effective career interventions that can be applied in South Korean high schools.     

Voluntary After‐School Alcohol and Drug Programs for Middle School Youth: If You Build it Right,They Will Come

Few after‐school programs target alcohol and other drug (AOD) use because it is difficult to encourage a diverse group of youth to voluntarily attend. The current study describes CHOICE, a voluntary after‐school program which targeted AOD use among middle school students. Over 4,000 students across eight schools completed surveys and 15% participated in CHOICE. Analyses indicated that there were some differences between CHOICE participants and nonparticipants. For example, African American and multiethnic students were more likely to attend. Past month alcohol users were more likely to initially attend, and marijuana users were more likely to continue attendance. Thus, CHOICE reached students of different racial and ethnic groups and attracted higher risk youth who may not typically obtain prevention services.     

Rural Appalachian High School Students’ College‐Going and STEMM Perceptions

The authors examined perceptions of key social cognitive career theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) variables related to college‐going and science, technology, engineering, math, and medical (STEMM) careers in 10th and 11th graders (N = 892) attending 3 rural Appalachian high schools. The authors examined differences in perceptions related to gender, prospective 1st‐generation college student status, and the presence or absence of aspirations to pursue a STEMM career. Young women and young men scored similarly on all but 1 dependent variable, college‐going self‐efficacy (young women scored higher). Students who had STEMM career aspirations had higher scores on every measure than those who did not. Results suggest examining a 3rd prospective 1st‐generation college student status group—students who are unsure of their parents’ education level—as a distinct group in future research. By examining the college‐going and STEMM attitudes of rural Appalachian high school students, this study advances the literature and informs practitioners on reducing educational and vocational inequalities in this region.     

Stability and Change in 25‐Year Occupational Career Patterns

The authors identify and describe occupational career patterns (OCPs) over 25 years for a single grade cohort of 170 rural high school graduates. OCP is the sequence of 1 person's work positions during the adolescent and adult years; a Stable OCP is experienced by persons engaged in the same type of occupation over their entire working career. More than one third of the respondents experienced Stable OCPs. Men experience greater OCP stability than women. OCP stability is linked to lower midlife career and job satisfaction, independent of the early experiences of socioeconomic status and gender.     

Career Compromise Types Among University Graduates During the School‐to‐Work Transition

Because of high youth unemployment caused by structural conditions, South Korean university graduates must compromise their employment preferences and instead accept whatever work is available. In this study, we classified the types of compromises using latent profile analysis to examine various factors involved in the career compromise of 472 recent university graduates during their school‐to‐work transition. We identified four types of compromise patterns with distinct characteristics and discovered that the university graduates who did not compromise their interest and aptitude in their job selection showed a higher level of commitment to their career compared with those who compromised. Results suggest that individuals who do not compromise their interests and aptitudes are more likely to have successful and fulfilling long‐term careers.     

Patterns of Informal Job Matching across the Life Course: Entry‐Level,Reentry‐Level,and Elite Non‐Searching*

The character and outcomes of informal job matching vary at different stages during people's lives. This is illustrated through an examination of non‐searchers—people who get their jobs without searching thanks to receiving unsolicited information about job openings. Examining data from the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I identify three distinct patterns of non‐searching. Early in the work career, “entry‐level” non‐searchers acquire their first few jobs often while still in school. During the mid‐career, “reentry‐level” non‐searchers tend to be women with little work experience who have been out of the labor market taking care of family responsibilities. Finally, “elite” non‐searchers tend to be male, highly experienced in their field, with very short gaps between employment. All three lack an economic urgency to get a job, but only the elite non‐searchers match prevailing assumptions of non‐searchers as the best connected and most advantaged workers. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating a life course perspective into the study of informal job matching.     

School‐to‐Work Transition of Career and Technical Education Graduates

This study analyzed the career development of career and technical education (CTE) high school graduates during their school‐to‐work transition, specifically their adaptability in the face of barriers. Forty graduates (22 men, 18 women) from working‐class backgrounds participated in baseline surveys at graduation and phenomenological interviews 1 year postgraduation. Primary themes were job loss altered career plans, whereas relevant jobs propelled career development; limited access to college constrained options, whereas college experience expanded options; graduates experienced the loss of education‐related support, and CTE served as a backup plan. Teachers and school counselors emphasized organizational barriers including limited staffing for upper level math courses and inconsistent workplace partnerships.     

Career‐Ready Students: A Goal of Comprehensive School Counseling Programs

This article opens with a rationale for and a definition of student career readiness. Next is a presentation of the qualities and attributes of career‐ready students. Then discussion follows about what students need to become career ready. Following this is a presentation of how comprehensive school counseling programs help students become career ready, including discussion of the delivery system for school counseling programs that provide the activities and services that contribute to student career readiness. The article closes with the critical point that helping all students become career ready requires a whole school–community approach.     

Teachers' Occupation‐Specific Work‐Family Conflict

To expand work‐family conflict (WFC) research to specific occupations, this study investigated how work and family generic and occupation‐specific stressors and support variables related to family interfering with work (F → W) and work interfering with family (W → F) among 230 Israeli high school teachers. Further expanding WFC research, the authors assessed WFC effects on burnout and vigor. Results indicated that W → F conflict was related to generic variables and more so to distinctive teaching characteristics (e.g., investment in student behavior and parent‐teacher relations). Both W → F and F → W predicted burnout, whereas only F → W predicted vigor. Implications for WFC research and occupational health programs are discussed.     

Enhancing Educational Support: Towards Holistic,Responsive and Strength‐based Services for Young Refugees and Asylum‐seekers

The importance of early school experiences in the personal and social development of young refugees and asylum‐seekers has been documented by researchers and enshrined in practice guidelines. The capacity of schools to implement these guidelines is, however, limited, in terms of the availability of appropriate knowledge and skills, financial resources and long‐term planning. In this article we draw upon case studies of six school or education‐based services funded by the Children's Fund. We explore the various ways in which these have enhanced the ability of schools to address multiple and interrelated family‐ and community‐level factors impacting on the educational attendance and achievement of this group. In conclusion, we consider the challenges to scale up and sustain these services.     

Welfare‐to‐Work Services: A Person‐Centered Perspective

Services designed to assist job seekers to leave public assistance and gain employment are well established throughout the U.S. Many of these programs are created and delivered by professionals of higher socioeconomic class backgrounds, but many program participants are of lower social class status. This situation can create “cross‐class” difficulties in the design and delivery of effective job‐search services. The author argues that using a person‐centered perspective, with the deliberate inclusion of genuineness and empathy in all phases of programming, may neutralize cross‐class variables and increase the effectiveness of interventions. Examples from programs emphasizing person‐centered concepts are offered.     

Using Values‐Based Webinar Interventions to Facilitate Career‐Life Exploration and Planning

Using a quasi‐experimental design, the authors examined whether career indecision could be reduced by participation in a values‐based career webinar designed to translate various types of psychological data (e.g., Holland‐type themes) into values‐based language. Participants (N = 67; 36 women, 31 men; mean age = 36 years) were divided into 1 control and 2 treatment groups. The 1st treatment group received an interest‐based intervention. The 2nd received a values‐based intervention. Both interventions consisted of 1 additional webinar spanning 1 hour in length. This study demonstrated a statistical significance of career indecision decrease through use of the values‐based, process‐oriented webinar intervention, which is particularly helpful to career counselors working with adults. The study also illustrated the effective application of online technology as a service delivery tool. Future research might examine the efficacy of this intervention in a variety of settings (e.g., K–12, postsecondary, agency, mental health, corporate).     

Variation in part‐time job quality within the nonprofit human service sector

This article extends the growing literature on the quality of part‐time employment to the domain of nonprofit human services, specifically grassroots organizations in which paid work is itself a relatively new reality. It addresses three central questions: How do part‐time and full‐time workers differ in their personal and household characteristics? How do part‐time jobs differ in access to employment benefits from their full‐time counterparts; and finally, How does benefits access vary among part‐time job titles? These lines of inquiry are examined using data from the populations of nonprofit domestic violence programs and their employees in a large midwestern metropolitan area. Analyses of worker‐level data reveal that part‐time workers in these settings disproportionately live with children, are in committed relationships, and report a strong preference for employment that facilitates work‐life balance; they are also less likely to be primary household wage earners. Analyses at the level of jobs suggest that employment benefits extended to part‐time jobs are minimal compared to their full‐time equivalents, but there are also striking variations among different part‐time titles. The results offer insights into the nature of part‐time work in these nonprofit human service settings and potential challenges for effective management.     

Career‐Life Preparedness: Revisiting Career Planning and Adjustment in the New Workplace

Although the economic and social context of work appears to be changing for more and more people, the author argues that time‐honored and empirically supported theories of career development continue to be relevant and useful. However, these theories and the core assumptions that underlie them (e.g., the “matching metaphor”) may need to be augmented by models and methods that help students and workers to prepare to a greater degree for difficult developmental transitions, obstacles to preferred career paths, and negative career‐life events such as unplanned job loss. The author offers a view of “career‐life preparedness” that, while informed by social‐cognitive career theory, is largely compatible with other approaches to career development and is linked conceptually to other recent work on career adaptability, resilience, and coping.     

Beyond School to Work: Continuing Contributions of Theory and Practice to Career Development of Youth

This response (a) makes a few comments about the articles as a group, (b) briefly highlights the historical context of previous theory-based models for career guidance in schools, and (c) argues that school to work (STW) is not an intellectual but an economic and a political strategy that needs to be examined carefully, especially in relation to students' career needs and theory-based interventions of the recent past.     

Realistic Major Previews in the School‐to‐College Transition of Italian High School Students

Industrial/organizational researchers have reported that realistic job previews diminish prospective workers' expectations but promote the satisfaction and persistence of those who ultimately accept a job assignment. The authors applied this strategy to the context of school‐to‐college transition; 354 Italian high school students were provided with a 2‐hour lecture designed to simulate exposure to a college major of their choice. Students showed moderate pre‐post increases in subject matter knowledge but reported small decreases in interests and outcome expectations (but not self‐efficacy) related to the academic major to which they were exposed.     

“Yes,I Can”: Testing an Intervention to Increase Middle School Students’ College and Career Self‐Efficacy

Middle school is the appropriate time for students to begin exploring careers and improving self‐efficacy; however, empirically supported career and college readiness interventions for U.S. middle school students are limited. Examining the effect of an intervention that combined a virtual experience and a local college visit on middle school students (99 girls, 74 boys), the authors found that participating students had higher levels of college and career self‐efficacy than did nonparticipating students. The study shows that a workshop of the online Florida CHOICES program coupled with a campus visit increased middle school student career and college self‐efficacy. Future research should include longitudinal studies and use of diverse populations to improve generalizability of study results.     

Continuity in Life‐Span Career Development: Career Exploration as a Precursor to Career Establishment

The authors examined continuity in career development from adolescence to middle adulthood by testing the proposition that early developmental task‐coping activity predicts later task‐coping activity. One hundred forty‐six rural high school graduates reported career exploratory activity in 9th grade and 12th grade, occupational choice clarity in 12th grade, and occupational establishment activity 25 years later. Controlling for gender, school grades, and verbosity, occupational choice clarity predicted midcareer establishment activity. The prediction models were somewhat different by gender.